3 ms·

How does this relate to his point about genteelisms or using words that don't mean what the user thinks they mean?

• jaclaz 9y ago
  >How does this relate to his point about genteelisms or using words that don't mean what the user thinks they mean? "Validazione" is not a word used by anyone outside some specific tech sectors or bureaucrats, a number of people would be perplexed about its meaning. I guess in English is the same, would you use "Wait, validation is under way" or "Wait, reading the card" or "Wait, checking the card info". There is an old (by now noone notices it but it was a thing when it was introduced) precedent with the verb "obliterare" which noone knew at the time it was introduced on buses. A sign "E' obbligatorio procedere all'obliterazione del biglietto" is (was) something that noone could understand. [english]It is compulsory to proceed to the obliteration of the ticket[/english] Obliterare is a perfectly valid verb, but it means - literally - to cancel a writing by drawing a line over it, and it was used only by academics and people of letters, while by extension it has a more common meaning of completely destroy/delete something/someone (from existence or from memory), etc. At a given time it was "invented" to mean "insert the ticket into the machine so that it will be timestamped (or only stamped) and/or punched or have a corner cut in such a way that it won't be re-usable". The same meaning of "to obliterate" for "to stamp" or " to punch" a ticket is in English as well, I believe. And "the machine" was called "obliteratrice" of course.